Defending the Christian faith and promoting its wisdom against the secular and religious challenges of our day.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Expendable Lives of the “Morally Irrelevant”

From where do we derive our value, significance and
self-esteem? A recent article, although it fails to establish such a standard,
is nevertheless dogmatic that, for some, there is no value:

Parents
should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are
“morally irrelevant” [MI] and ending their lives is no different to
abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has
argued…The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says
newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to
life.”

If babies are “morally irrelevant,” who then is relevant? Is
it adults? Productive citizens? Likeable people? People who look and think as
we do? Perhaps everyone is an expendable commodity, socially valued according
to their temporary usefulness? And babies are just not that useful!

Who then decides if another individual is “morally
irrelevant?” The ruling class? The party in power? The majority? Do we want to
live in a society where our ultimate value is determined by others who might
deem us “morally irrelevant?”

By virtue of what criteria can they say that babies are not
“actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life?” Is it age? Why not
also the unemployed, the infirm, the aged or the mentally ill? Some, like the
renowned ethicist Peter Singer, assign value according to intelligence. Perhaps
then we should all be accorded value and influence according to an IQ test. If
you score 180, then you should receive a greater vote than those who score
lesser, and if you score under 100, then you are socially expendable.

If babies can be put to death, why not others? Why not me?
For how long can I feel safe in such a society? I read that the elderly fear
going to the hospital in Holland,
no longer knowing if their doctor is their advocate or their executioner.

These are very real questions. If babies are subject to
murder, where does it stop? If there is nothing holy about their lives, by what
arrogance can I convince myself that I have adequate, socially-assigned value –
enough to insure that I will be reckoned “morally relevant” by my morally relativistic
society?

When value is equated with convenience and profit, then anyone
is fair-game – the unpopular, the vulnerable, and the weak. I don’t think that
we realize what a great portal to hell we’ve cracked open when we replaced the
Biblical concept of “sanctity of life” (Genesis 1:26-27) with a pragmatic
assessment of the value of life. This has unhinged us from the Christian values
that had once made the West great.

We’ve replaced the dignity of each human life with a
cold-blooded, materialistic determination of who is relevant and who isn’t – a
virtual survival-of-the-fittest, of-the- popular, and of any life that doesn’t
look like our own. We are on a slippery slope. For example, euthanasia and
physician-assisted-suicide (PAS) used to only apply to the terminally ill. However,
now membership to the “morally irrelevant” has been liberalized:

The
Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has released new guidelines for
interpreting the 2002 Euthanasia Act that now includes “mental and
psychosocial ailments” such as “loss of function, loneliness and loss of
autonomy” as acceptable criteria for euthanasia. The guidelines also allow
doctors to connect a patient’s lack of “social skills, financial resources
and a social network” to “unbearable and lasting suffering,” opening the
door to legal assisted death based on “psychosocial” factors, not terminal
illness.

When pragmatism replaces principle – the transcendent
measure of evaluation – only “choice” remains, whether it’s the individual’s
choice or the State’s choice. When convenience and comfort are the measures,
the value of all humanity is degraded and the lives of those at the margins are
endangered. It is therefore not surprising that the margins are now being pumped
full with those who lack “social skills, financial resources and a social
network.”

The Oxford
study deemed that “newborn babies” are “morally irrelevant.” But if newborns
are MI, why not also two-years-olds? If two-year-olds, why not also
four-year-olds or ten-year-olds? What principle will stop this steady slide?

If a society is measured by its care for the marginalized
and defenseless, then we are going in the wrong direction. We were aghast at
Hitler’s social experiment to build a new society by ridding itself of the
undesirables. How is it that we no longer blink an eye?

4 comments:

I am so sorry for those who have no reason to believe in some supreme being who is in charge of all things and will not allow for anything that is against his will. Oh how low humanity has fallen. We are so educated that we become edumacated. Gloria Todman

I give my permission for these "moral ethicists" to allow themselves to self-destruct before they are allowed to pollute the minds of those who cannot think for themselves or who need a reason or cause to believe. Gloria